


Le Léthé

by heartstone



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 21:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11170308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstone/pseuds/heartstone
Summary: Warmth, that is what Melkor first becomes aware of when the accursed doors open and oblivion is disturbed. It is a small thing at first- barely a bud of vehemence- but it soon blossoms imperial red until the petals of its influence reach out across the nothingness of deep space to brush its tendrils, feather-like, across His aching flesh. The soft, ebbing heat emanates in thin waves from a dim, flickering glow like embers lying low in a hearth, pulsing with each beat of golden light and washing over His aimless form like one would caress a sleeping lover’s face. His fingers, long numbed to the cold begin to thaw and the stiffness that had burrowed deep in His joints is lifted, shook by sudden tremors. His sprawling body spasms to the ecstasy of the capering flame in a desire as intense as the aurorean luminesce to his long unaccustomed eyes.***At the end of the third age, Mairon joins his Master in the Void.





	Le Léthé

Le Léthé

(Poem Excerpt by Charles Baudelaire)

***

To bury my head, full of pain,

In your skirts redolent of your perfume,

To inhale, as from a withered flower,

The moldy sweetness of my defunct love.

 

I wish to sleep! to sleep rather than live!

In a slumber doubtful as death,

I shall remorselessly cover with my kisses

Your lovely body polished like copper.

 

To bury my subdued sobbing

Nothing equals the abyss of your bed,

Potent oblivion dwells on your lips

And Léthé flows from your kisses.

***

Warmth, that is what Melkor first becomes aware of when the accursed doors open and oblivion is disturbed. It is a small thing at first- barely a bud of vehemence- but it soon blossoms imperial red until the petals of its influence reach out across the nothingness of deep space to brush its tendrils, feather-like, across His aching flesh. The soft, ebbing heat emanates in thin waves from a dim, flickering glow like embers lying low in a hearth, pulsing with each beat of golden light and washing over His aimless form like one would caress a sleeping lover’s face. His fingers, long numbed to the cold begin to thaw and the stiffness that had burrowed deep in His joints is lifted, shook by sudden tremors. His sprawling body spasms to the ecstasy of the capering flame in a desire as intense as the aurorean luminesce to his long unaccustomed eyes.

He feels the flexing and surging of His own Fëa as it reaches for the Little Flame afore Him, thrumming like the strings of a sonorous cello. How welcoming he pirouettes in the distance- such a sweltering passion unfelt in ages- the fervor of its scarlet and amber flames as it licked and writhed in the surrounding abyss teasing, almost. His once blinded eyes- like pools of jet, reflect the endless pitch around him, an inky and eternal Void, but now settle fixedly on the golden, radiant aura. Vision blurred and smeared with tears until the cinnabar morphed to lustful sanguine and burnt vermeils and yellows startling and lurid in their intensity. And He knows this light, knows each and every slender thread of simmering conflagration. 

But the flickering, dim glow is elusive, and in his passage across the threshold of the Door of Night it is shameful to have failed his Master. The flames, so pressing and exposed in its vibrancy attempts to shield himself from the unbroken gaze of his Master’s black eyes, to hide the dishonor of his frail and broken Hröa with the mantle of his opalescent soul. He desperately clung to the ravenous darkness but found only an eternal emptiness that would not respond to his hot touch, to the desperation in his raking nails. 

And the Little Flame cannot hide, for his inferno is the only light in all the Void, the only source in all the vastness of eternity. It is an imperishable flame, one that cannot be quenched by the overburdening absolute around him unless he is severed from his Vala. And his Fëa soars like a bonfire to be so close to the one so severely bound to it- he is whole and feels a completion that guides him without conscious thought to the still and silent figure that drifts alone in the darkness.

And Melkor is cold and pale like the moon against the onyx, and His flesh is but a thin veil covering the barely-contained shadows that are His soul. He is bruised purple and fading, like crushed pearl, and even still there are three long talon-marks across His visage, once like marble but now translucent in its emotions and scarred like the surface of gypsum. His hands are still charcoal-grey and in the night the fingers tremor and strain from reaching outward towards His other half.

He beholds the resonating bursts of ruby energy and feels a song well in His throat and outflow from deep within Himself before it can be quelled. The cadence is unlike any before sung and it issues forth from Melkor’s breast as if He were a songbird. The melody within Him is desolate and speaks of unimaginable loneliness and a crushing sorrow but as it passes His cracked and split lips it sounds more like a moan, a whisper of longing than any real tune: a gasping dry as dust.

But the Little Flame can sense the pieces of the music and fit them together, for the golden threads of his Fëa connect with the velvet shadows of his Master’s and the melody is transmuted from soul to soul despite the violent choking that sends sound waves tearing across the fabric of unbroken space. A single tear collects around his slitted eyes and it seemed to freeze there in patient attentiveness, blood and salt and steam from the heat of the Maia’s flesh.

But too soon is he reminded of his pitiful failure, that his Master’s music is so harrowing because he was unsuccessful in releasing Him from the Void. The suffering long endured by the Mighty barred from His own creations, isolated from all that would be destroyed or created at His fell touch was nearly too much, and once more Mairon sought to tuck himself away. 

And yet, before the Little Flame can flicker and hide himself behind his thin, four-fingered hand and splay the digits across his half-lidded eyes, the Vala is reaching, reaching further. Silence echoes after the small strangled noise that comes from pale, quivering lips. He stops, fingertips just moments from the Maia, from His other half. It stays there like one warms their hands on a cold day by the fireside, anticipation broiling in the core of their souls while thin lines of their sable and gold auras twirled and courted one another in the vastness.

His Precious is but a diluted shade of his former glory, and secretly the Little Flame thinks that He will not even recognise him as his Hröa is now despite the glow of his soul. He is scrawny and ashen, his once copper skin greyed and dulled and pulled taut across sharp bone; his hair thin and limp, the colour of bleached straw; and his face lined with white scarring and bloody wounds, sclera flushed angry red with broken capillaries. 

To Melkor, however, he still smelled like cinnamon and firewood and brown sugar; saffron, honey and pepper- all that is sweet and lively and pleasant. Still his eyes held the penetrating fire that enraptured him in the Beginning, that was chatoyant with the desire to create and to order. And still his form trembled at the thought of Melkor’s cool touch.

The pale, forlorn figure, condemned until the end of Arda, sang again and this time it sounded like a sigh- like a zephyr over lapping waves or the twitching halitus of leaves- and it was such that He was relieved, like He was reveling in the liberation from an oppressive and unbearable burden and He could move again. His murmurs, the susurrations of praise were unintelligible but sparked a surge in both of their Fëa at being so deliciously  _ near _ after ages of being sundered. Sobs quaked the small frame of the Golden Maia, and minutely, sluggishly they sunk into each others grasp. Slowly they folded in on one another, the shadowy figure curling protectively around His Precious, around the only light and heat of the Void. 

In their thoughts- for they were infirm and exhausted- they spoke; first in gentle whispers and careful proddings, in music like all the timid plucking of harps and the rustling blow of wind in leaves or the distant signing of choirs or in the solitude of their accustomed voices. The slim shoulders of Mairon--  _ Mairon: _ the name long unspoken but now sacrosanct-- his slim, sickly shoulders heaved in time with the thoughts that emptied unchecked from his mind: of failure, apologies and prostration, even of unworthiness. But the cold, the forlorn, He would not hear it and hushed His Precious with a singular deep strum that vibrated both of their Fëa. Warm, golden rays and ebony darkness bled into the Void, and then Mairon knew that there was nothing for Melkor to forgive, that his Master loved and sheltered him.

Carefully, from the entwined forms a gentle, sorrowful harmony began, despairing: as if it were not two, but one voice. The song was in tune to the surroundings and the waves of illumination and stygian shade and sound rippled like water, until it seemed for a moment to the two reunited that the Void was not so much  _ the Void  _ as simply  _ a void, _ so long as both were there. And with the harmony of their music, their energies mingled like they did in Utumno when their Hröa first joined and grew ever stronger in one another. Heat and cold, light and dark; age-old antithesis married in notes of despair and longing, metamorphosing into hope and love, joy and fulfillment, and Bliss. Utter, whole, and complete Bliss that filled the soul such that their music became sobbing at times, the gentle brush of lips at others, and the frantic, exuberant sounds of their coupling: of the bite of teeth and the sting of nails.

Crimson aura bled with soot until they could not be distinguished, their embrace never unlocked, their music never ceased in its endless and exquisite harmony and natural evolution even as the stillness threatened to crush both vulnerable, exposed spirits. Drifting like the waters of Léthé, they relinquished their trouble and their cares and swayed in the fathomless abyss listening to the low, pervasive hum and sometimes bursting into song. But never apart and always in comfort to the other they were Eä,  _ to be. _

Drifting, sustaining and throbbing they grew slowly,  _ achingly _ back into their old power as the Little Flame darkened, skin like burnished copper freckled with shimmering gold, eyes a vibrant and scarlet flame, hair thick orange curls like the fire of his soul. And to Melkor He grew ever in strength with His Precious, skin aglow, hair a glossy raven sheen and His eyes no longer dull but absorbent, ever trained on the Maia He held forever in His arms. And never in their time did they think of escape.

And Mairon forgot his failure on Middle Earth and the Vala forgot His, and they surged and melded and drifted and tasted the Nepenthe on each other’s lips and forgot nothing but themselves, but of their time simply  _ to be. _ Flitting memories of Utumno and Angband, the nights spent in the sweat-soaked silks and furs, and of the night when they wed- or even the contentment of the days when Melkor would rest His head in His Maia’s lap as he fretted over troop reports. Of the days when the Mighty Arising would visit the isolated smith in Aulë’s forges, imagining from the lurking shadows this Golden Spirit in all his splendor, draped in gold and incoronated with all the jewels of Arda at His side on an obsidian throne. . .

They forgot even the pain as they healed, the Vala’s charred hands flexing under new, tingling feeling, His retinas ever fixing their once silmaril-blinded blur, and the scar across His terrible visage fading into nothing. The Little Flame, unaware, settled himself in his Master’s lap and nuzzled under his chin and planted kisses like magma to where the memory of these wounds were- even the finger long shorn from Mairon’s right hand steadily regrew until he twisted the digit absentmindedly, a ghost of a weight of a ring placed there long ago.  _ Agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.  _

Centuries passed, and Mairon grew so vibrant and Melkor so intense and their harmony so tuned that the Void became transformed and was now merely the void, tamed and headful. Unto the pair came visions that were not memories, visions of world for none but themselves and the joint offspring of their thoughts, of the creatures once abhorred. And Melkor thought of things for His Precious that held no motive beyond the comfort and safety of His beloved; and Mairon dreamt of things that could soothe his Master, that would give fulfillment and joy. And at last they knew peace.

There was no selfishness held, no malice, nor hatred or contempt- only a deep and unfathomable will to shelter and further reassure the other half, and a burning yearning of Eä, and of creation to share wholly with the other and  _ not to possess. _ For in His arms, Melkor held His own Flame Imperishable and they were in serenity, their melody filling the emptiness until it replied back, until the blanket of black space wrapped around them and responded to their touch, their whispers, their caresses and the slow thrusting of their hips (even now, they relished the joining of Hröa). 

Forgetfulness, it seemed, Arda but a treasured, yet ever-fading memory until both spirits wanted nothing more than to stay in this forever entwined, the sleep-like dream, until the opening of the Doors of the Night seemed an infinitely cruel intrusion. And the eons stretched on and on and on until it seemed even Eru forgot them, until Arda itself began to wither and collapse.

None did bother them, and their bliss was sustained and everlasting, their connection inseverable until they curled into themselves and their energy condensed and their voices like all the instruments and all the choirs grew so strong; their energy issuing forth so suddenly from them like a supernova that only Eru could bear to watch, having never forgotten His firstborn Ainur and Maiar. Only He could see that at last the intertwined spirits forgot even the feeling (let alone the desire) of rancor and selfishness, of domination and discord, and from their conjoined bodies birthed a vast and infinite universe even further than the void, expanding with things new and unthought of, beautiful things of love and passion and comfort and charity that were not a twisted mockery of others.

Until the music from their lips was so harmonious, was so naturally evolved and progressed that the two spirits did not even know that their music was now the original music of creation that Eru had sung in the Beginning.  _ And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in Me.  _ And it was perceived that Eru smiled.

But still, tight in their embrace, forgetful of all save themselves, bound inextricably, the Flame of Creation and the Shadows of Entropy still sing, and still make love unaware that they birthed the stars of a universe free from Discord.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction and its a little bit "stream of consciousness." Anyway, tell me what you think, I'd love to know if I should make more!   
> ***


End file.
